


a sprinter, learning to wait

by jewishfitz



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (like so light it’s barely there but better safe than sorry), Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Canon Compliant, Grief/Mourning, Light suicidal ideation, M/M, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Post-Post-Apocalypse, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22773742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jewishfitz/pseuds/jewishfitz
Summary: The world ends, then it doesn’t. Jon deals with what happens next.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 17
Kudos: 89





	a sprinter, learning to wait

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Sprained Ankle by Julien Baker. Unbeta’d, all mistakes are my own. Posted via mobile because I hate myself. This is my first tma fic, for whatever that’s worth.

* * *

No one talks about what happens afterwards, in the stories at least. There is such an emphasis on the saving of the world, on surviving, just surviving, that he finds himself woefully unprepared for the fallout. Books and movies are all climax, no denouement. You see, once you survive, you move onto the far trickier business of living. Living is something that Jon has never been very good at.

It figures, he thinks on one of his comparatively better days, that as soon as he gets used to being a monster, the monstrousness gets ripped out of him. He misses it, in some strange, morbid way. At least the monstrousness belonged to him. It was horrible, but after long enough living with the Eye’s effects he had begun to feel a certain ownership of it. Now he just has himself. It’s just him and the painfully hollow hole where he feels his heart should be. It’s cheesy, he knows, but he can’t think of a better way to describe the dull ache he feels in his chest at all hours of the day.

It’s the kind of cheesy sentiment Martin would like, or maybe the kind that he would laugh at. Jon can’t decide. He’s not sure which one he would prefer. He knows it doesn’t matter.

It’s the little things that trip him up the most, that send him spinning out of control and make him feel like a stranger to his own life. He has to eat regularly again. Back when he was reading statements he could go for days without feeding himself, as long as he was feeding the Eye. His first week back in his flat he had nearly passed out from hunger, twice, before really pinning down the source of the issue. These are the problems he tackles now; mundane things like hunger and laundry and taxes. 

And grief. But mundane as it may be, it never really feels that way.

Jon feels guilty. The word “guilt” doesn’t feel quite right in his mouth, but it’s the closest thing to the weight he feels every morning when he wakes up alone. Guilt, guilt, guilt. He makes himself coffee (he doesn’t drink tea anymore). He eats cold cereal for breakfast. He turns down Georgie and Melanie’s well-intentioned invitations to get drinks without an attempt at an excuse, because he doesn’t deserve to. He doesn’t deserve any of this. He goes about his day, every day, and he simply truly and fundamentally does not deserve to.

Martin was always the one who daydreamed of a normal life. He would sometimes describe his dreams of the future to Jon, first in Scotland and then wherever they were hiding out for the night, first with a lightness almost like a joke and then with a fierce desperation like someone clinging to a lifesaver. Jon never had any plans for the future, he hadn’t been stupid, but still he found himself swept up by Martin’s descriptions of future apartments and trips and big homemade meals and all the kinds of things that two people who love each other have to look forward to. And, in Scotland at least, Jon had found himself starting to hope too. And then the world came to a screeching halt. And then Martin... Now Jon is left with a collection of dreams, as faint and unreachable as the images in old Polaroid photos.

Now Jon has a life. And, honestly, he isn’t quite sure what to do with it.

He finds the mug, chipped slightly and bright blue, buried under some clothes in the corner of his room. He didn’t think he still had it. He certainly doesn’t remember throwing it in his bag when they fled the safe house when all that— he doesn’t know how it survived what had happened.

He picks it up and examines it. It’s a little battered and worse for wear, but he thinks it should still hold water. The faded price tag is still on the bottom. He remembers how he had argued that they didn't need a souvenir from a rest stop on their way to a  _ secret off-the-books safe house in Scotland, Martin. I’m sure there will be plenty of mugs when we get there and besides, the owner of the shop marked that up by exactly 73.7% because that shipment all came in with chips and he doesn’t think they’ll sell at all and— what? Don’t look at me like that you  _ know  _ I can’t control this, honestly as far as knowledge goes it’s not  _ that  _ invasive and— _

He doesn’t remember the rest of the argument, but he remembers the way Martin had looked standing in the flickering light of the rest stop, how he had rolled his eyes at Jon and went to buy the mug anyways and teased him about margins and markups and exact percentages and basic economic principles until Jon had threatened to crash the car into the nearest fence post and Martin had just laughed, laughed so long and hard that Jon couldn’t help but grin even though he was still very annoyed.

He very delicately places the mug in the cabinet of his kitchen, and closes the door. The memory of Martin’s rolling eyes, though, stays with him for a long time afterwards.

He goes to therapy on Basira’s recommendation, to someone she said wasn’t “weird about the whole thing”. Jon trusts Basira’s opinion, because he knows that they’re both in the same shitty and messed-up metaphorical boat. As Jon expects, talking about his problems, supernatural or otherwise, is like pulling teeth. Maybe worse. Still, he feels a little lighter when he leaves his first session. Only a little, but it’s a start. He heats up some leftovers for dinner when he gets home.

He starts listening to music again. He dusts off his ancient iPod and blasts the first track he finds a little bit too loudly into his ears as he finally attacks his apartment with a duster. It’s a classical piece, slow and melancholic and not really a match for the anger he’s taking out on the cobwebs in the bathroom, but it makes him feel better nevertheless. He lets it play on shuffle, too focused on his task to really care. By the time he’s done cleaning, exhausted and hungry, it’s playing some inane pop song he doesn’t remember downloading. It’s so at odds with the scene, so at odds with his frankly disastrous life, that he finds himself actually laughing. It’s too loud and too hard and a little too crazed, but he can’t remember the last time he laughed, so he lets whatever’s happening take him and resolves not to worry about what it means until later. He makes himself lunch. It isn’t good but it’s better than nothing.

He often finds himself sitting in the park. The pigeons and the squirrels don’t pay him any mind, which is a good reminder that the world keeps spinning without him and doesn’t particularly care if he’s a good person or not or if he’s worthy of his life or not. At least, that’s what he thinks. His therapist stresses the importance of a good support network. He thinks she’s right, but that’s kind of a lot for him at the moment. He decides that the squirrels are a good start. He still doesn’t accept Georgie and Melanie’s invitations, but his responses are getting a little more polite, a little more human. At least, he thinks so.

He resolves to find a hobby. Not one that keeps him disconnected and isolated, but one that involves other people. He signs up to volunteer at a local animal shelter on a whim, and finds he’s rather good at socializing the more prickly kittens. He enjoys his work, and it gives him something to do between recovery and his barely-begun hunt for a new job. (How do you even go about writing a resume when your last job led directly to the apocalypse? He can't exactly get a reference from anybody either. It’s frustrating but it’s a mundane kind of frustration so he lets it settle in his chest. It’s a good distraction.)

When he actually accepts Georgie and Melanie’s monthly invitation for drinks, he’s not sure who among them is the most surprised. Basira is there too, quiet and drawn in a way Jon is all too familiar with. They have fun, though, and Jon smiles so much for so long that it really, properly, hurts by the time he gets home. He’s been out of practice.

Before he knows it, and before he’s quite ready, life starts to pick up its old pace. He feels like he’s been dropped into some piece of music without a score or a metronome, and he’s struggling to keep up with the tempo but he’s doing ok, he’s doing ok, he wakes up every day and makes himself coffee and eggs and he’s doing ok and before he knows it—

It’s been a year. The date isn’t circled in his calendar but it stares back at him regardless. It doesn’t knock him off his feet quite like he thinks it should, and he can’t parce out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. He stares at the calendar for a long time before slowly retrieving the chipped blue mug from its place in the kitchen cabinet and making himself some tea.

It’s stuttering at first, not at all like riding a bike, but it’s tea and not rocket science and before he knows it he’s sitting alone at his table holding the steaming mug between his two cold hands. He takes a sip and it burns and he laughs because he forgot that normal human people need to wait for their tea to cool and  _ they can’t drink boiling water, Jon. Maybe you can do whatever you’d like but some of us are normal people with normal throats and normals skin that burns— oh god, I didn’t mean to— that wasn’t— why are you  _ laughing  _ it’s not funny, are you— _

He smiles at the empty space across from him. 

“Thank you,” he says to nothing. “For all of this. I didn’t ask for it, but I’m grateful.” He blows on his tea, and the steam curls off it like mist on a sea shore. “I’ll try to make the best of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I realized after writing this that it was definitely influenced by inkedinserendipity’s excellent fic, Dethroned (https://archiveofourown.org/works/22342663), so I highly recommend you check that out if you want some heartbreaking post-series content.  
> Hit me up on tumblr for more nonsense, I’m @jewishfitz!


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